How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke

http://cnnsi.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Recession+or+no+recession,+many+NFL,+NBA+and+Major+League+-+03.23.09+-+SI+Vault&expire=&urlID=34801184&fb=Y&url=http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153364/1/index.htm&partnerID=289881

by ido • 17 years ago

23 31 17 years ago

cnnsi.printthis.clickability.com

jerryji• 17 years ago

A good reading for anyone who feels bad about being a programmer.

jm4• 17 years ago

Why? So we can feel better about ourselves because some other person found more financial success and still managed to botch it all up? I don't understand this. People read garbage tabloids for the same reason. Why does seeing someone else's hard fall make people feel better about having never achieved their own goals?

thetrumanshow• 17 years ago

Yes, precisely, and not necessarily because we think they didn't deserve their short-lived wealth, but rather for the same reasons that people prefer relative wealth to absolute wealth (citation needed): Because you can't stand it when others fare better than you. And what's wrong with that? It is the foundation of a healthy competitive spirit which drives people to succeed.

jleyank• 17 years ago

As Rod the Mod said a long time ago: He's got a lot more money than sense...

patio11• 17 years ago

Posted here before, but still good.

I wonder if this happens to founders? Surely there are some twentysomethings who saw their balance go from three digits to seven in a day. They probably do not have seven kids or a poverty mindset to be unlearned, but surely some have problems.

pj4• 17 years ago

"The solution to the problem is, without a doubt, education," the adviser says. "Change won't happen until grown men start wanting to learn."

That sums it up right there and by "it," I mean "all of it." The problem. The problem with our society. The problem with the educational system. The problem with our national debt. With our dependence on foreign oil.

Why don't people want to learn anymore? I don't understand why it seems so easy, so obvious, that "this" just isn't the way.

Am I the only one frustrated by the continued bad decision making? We sell these poor athletes, and I mean poor in every sense, the illusion of wealth and fame and happiness and then rip the carpet right out from under them. It takes years, decades of dedication to a dream and then they are bankrupt. Not only do they not have the millions they were "promised," but they have no education, no skills applicable outside sports, their bodies are too old to do the only thing they can do.

Why do we keep doing this to people?

It's really sad. It makes me really sad.

What's going to happen? I can't see anything good coming from this. I can't see any good future down this path. It feels so much like the wrong path. I feel like I'm being taken down this bad path against my will. I don't want to go down this path, but it's like I'm stuck in this huge pack of people all stampeding toward a huge cliff and I don't want to run over the cliff. "There's a cliff ahead!!" I yell and no one hears it, they're too busy running, not even knowing where they are going.

What am I supposed to do? What are people who don't want to go off the cliff supposed to do?

DanielBMarkham4• 17 years ago

Start a parachute company

pj4• 17 years ago

clever, thanks for that. I need a laugh in this state of mind. :)

edw5192• 17 years ago

"Why don't people want to learn anymore?"

Most of these athletes never did.

They are the opposite of us. While we were misunderstood for all those years working our butts off in anonymity, they were getting their butts kissed. From the time they were toddlers. All the way through school where they were promoted along whether or not they ever went to class.

When you have nothing left for the ass kissers to kiss, then what are you going to do?

wallflower• 17 years ago

I was shocked the other day to read that basically really good athletes at a top-tier sports schools are basically professional athletes. Boosters lease SUVs like Cadillac Escalades, give the athletes the keys to the car - and it's all quasi-legal because the Boosters aren't technically directly affiliated with the athletic program.

When in the States there is so much societal pressure to be athletic/look athletic/enjoy the spectacle of sports, I think we are in trouble where Asian tigers like China have societal pressure and strong peer approval to study hard and aspire to become engineers.

kirse• 17 years ago

Usually you have very productive posts on here, but I'm down-voting this one because it's BS.

There are extremely few elite athletes who can simply step into their sport with little training and discipline and perform to their max, in the same way that very few startups ever take off on pure luck and little work. For the majority of athletes, however, they apply the same level of startup-like discipline and drive to their sport to maximize their own individual talents, and I think it's ridiculous for you to claim that the attention they get is somehow undeserved or out of place. You certainly wouldn't be shouting about undeserved attention and "butt kissing" if a YC startup was acquired for millions and had tons of PR coverage.

In the same fashion that you chose to sacrifice athletic achievement to delve into learning, some athletes chose to give up some learning to dive into athletic achievement. Regardless, this whole nerd vs. athlete nonsense really needs to stop. Both are simply two groups of people who have been given different talents who are working equally hard trying to maximize those talents.

DanielBMarkham4• 17 years ago

Over the last decade from time to time I've been trying to figure out how to make contacts in rural America to gain startup funding and these athletes are investing in total crap?

Instead of VCs, I should have been pitching football players.

mahmud• 17 years ago

Read the article again. They invest in crap businesses because the ideas are simple and the products they offer are physical. The thinking goes, if the t-shirt company goes I still have the t-shirts which I can autograph and sell.

Your idea wouldn't go very well, stick to VCs.

DanielBMarkham4• 17 years ago

I didn't gather that. I mean, I got the part about Securities are invisible, after all, and if you don't study them, they're unintelligible. Not to mention boring. Inventions, nightclubs, car dealerships and T-shirt companies have an advantage: the thrill of tangibility.

But flotation devices for furniture? Inspirational movies? Restaurants? Missing prenuptials?

I grant that athletes might tend towards more physical goods, but I'll bet you good money there has been a lot invested in less tangible ones as well.

Actually I've given up on VCs for now. Their track records are worse than mine. Bootstrapping is much more logical for technology in this climate.

yardie• 17 years ago

I'm sorry but I feel really unsympathetic about this story. And I've read basically the same thing in multiple places. You will always find examples of people with the extreme misfortune of having more money than brains. These people are in a special class because nothing you do or say will ever change the outcome.

I've sat through the classes as the coach brought in a "life coach" to explain money, contracts, and being an adult. Most will absorb the information and understand. You get the few wayward knuckleheads where nothing matters. If you present a real life case of misfortune they will imagine a scenario where they dance around. Example:

Coach: ...this star athlete let his best friend be his money manager. He mishandled it and our athlete was broke and owned the government $100ks in taxes.

Knucklehead: That won't happen to me. I'd let my mom handle the money, she's good with numbers.

Coach: Son that's not the point. YOU have to be aware of YOUR finances or you could find yourself in the same situation.

Knucklehead: Nah, I trust my mom. She'd never do me like that.

>> Not the actual conversation but similar.

If they were in the 40s or 50s when star athletes were starting to post large numbers I could feel a little sympathy. They might not have known, but if you are in the 20s or 30s chances are someone has given you the speech on protecting your interests first.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

Is this the same article as the one submitted earlier?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=530151

It sure looks like the same article. It's hard to tell at a glance with this kind of URL, which evidently doesn't trigger duplicate detection.

chollida1• 17 years ago

I just counted 14 people that I know who did a master's degree. Almost all of them in the Engineering, math or Comp Sci fields.

None of those people paid to do it. I wasn't aware that anyone actually paid to do a Masters. I always assumed that grants, scholarships, fellowships and research dollars paid for a masters.

Do people, outside of an MBA*, actually pay for their Masters degree?

RK• 17 years ago

Not sure what that has to do with the article, but...

Yes, it's pretty common to pay for a master's. A lot of departments will only fund PhD students (automatically). Master's only people usually have to "pay their own way", although that might consist of finding their own research or teaching assistantship, etc.

balding_n_tired• 17 years ago

Around the house is my grandfather's ca. 1911 yearbook from a midwestern engineering school. I was entertained to read a two page item by the yearbook staff calling for a better sports program to draw attention to the school. The school survives, but probably remains in D III.

How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke

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